


International House Pancake Night (Featuring a Math Major)

by eafay70



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Not Hockey Players (Hockey RPF)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eafay70/pseuds/eafay70
Summary: Despite being a math major, Tyler's first semester living in college finds him in the International House, a special interest residence for international students, past study abroad students, and future study abroad students. His Czech roommate, Ondrej, is remarkably handsome and considerate - which is the least of Tyler's woes.
Relationships: Tyler Johnson/Ondrej Palat
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: Lightning Strike to the Heart 2020





	International House Pancake Night (Featuring a Math Major)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NutsForBolts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NutsForBolts/gifts).



> Dear NutsForBolts,  
> I saw in your signup that you like AUs, so I decided to make an AU based on my college experiences! I hope you enjoy it! =D
> 
> And I hope everyone else enjoys it, too! =D
> 
> Special thanks to my beta, whose name I will put here post-author reveals! <3

Tyler stood at his dorm room window and watched his parents’ car drive away. As soon as it was out of view, he fist-pumped gleefully. “College begins!”

“They told us rookie students lived in their own dorms on the other side of campus.”

Tyler jolted at the sudden voice and turned around. A rather handsome guy was standing in the doorway. “How did you get here?” Tyler asked, wincing at the slight nervous squeak in his voice.

“I used the elevator, same as everyone else.” He crossed the room and held out his hand. “It appears we’re roommates. I’m Ondrej.”

“I’m Tyler.” They shook hands. “What did you say before? ‘Rookie student?’”

“Yeah,” Ondrej frowned. “I don’t think that’s the right phrase, but I don’t remember what it’s supposed to be.”

“Freshman,” Tyler said quickly, hoping to make Ondrej stop frowning. “I know what you meant, of course, but ‘rookie’ is just a sports thing.”

“I know a lot of sports English, sorry.”

“No, it’s fine! I love sports!” Tyler felt a little proud when this made Ondrej smile. “Anyway, the point is, I went to community college and lived at home for three semesters. Now that I’ve transferred here, it’s my first time living away from home, so it feels like college is really beginning for me.”

Ondrej nodded. “I understood… some of that. But my English isn’t that fast yet.”

“Sorry! I’ll slow down!” Tyler then proceeded to explain himself again, this time pausing to check that Ondrej actually got it. It took awhile, but it was absolutely worth it to see Ondrej’s face light up with understanding.

* * *

A few hours later, Tyler and Ondrej went downstairs to the remarkably spacious television room for a house meeting. A tall guy smiled and waved. “Welcome to spring semester at the International House! I’m Steven, your RA.”

Tyler gulped. He’d known that this building was called the International House and organized by several departments, but he had no idea what that meant. Unlike Ondrej, there was nothing international about Tyler, so he was worried about fitting in with his new housemates.

“So, most of you were here last semester, but not all of you were, so I’m going to focus on the important things: The International House is a special interest house for international students, past study abroad students, and present study abroad students. It’s officially sponsored by Professor Cooper at the sociology department, but also used by other humanities departments. Study abroad events happen here a lot, mostly because of humanities dean Professor Bettman.”

“Boo!” Ondrej hollered.

Steven arched an eyebrow. “How do you already know that we don’t like him?”

“He’s very rude in his emails,” Ondrej explained.

One of the other guys in the room gave Ondrej a thumbs-up. “Very good observation! Boo Bettman!”

“We can do that later,” Steven said firmly. “Right now, I want to point out that this semester, unlike last semester, the room right above the kitchen has two people living in it, so please be considerate of them when you’re in the kitchen. On that note, Tyler and Ondrej, would you like to introduce yourselves?”

“Okay!” Ondrej waved. “I am Ondrej from Czechia, studying international relations.”

“And I’m Tyler from Washington State. I’m… a math major with no plans for study abroad. My impression is that I’m here because there’s no room anywhere else.”

“Yeah - it’s taken longer to build the new dorms than they thought, but they’re making the student body bigger anyway,” Steven sighed. “But regardless, we’re all very happy to have you with us!”

“Yes! Help us afford a second International House Pancakes Night!” The guy from earlier gave Tyler a thumbs-up.

Steven groaned. “Nikita, stop interrupting.”

“Fine,” Nikita said very melodramatically. Ondrej laughed softly, which made Tyler feel better about his unusual housing situation.

* * *

On the official first day of the semester, Tyler decided to head to the library after class to do his homework. It took him only five minutes to determine it was far too crowded for him to focus, so he went back to his room, where he was much more productive despite an occasional series of noises from the kitchen beneath him.

About an hour later, Ondrej announced his return to the room with a surprised shout in Czech. “Sorry, Tyler! I didn’t expect you to be here.”

“I’m a little surprised myself,” Tyler admitted, turning around to face Ondrej - who looked very strong as he moved his many textbooks from his backpack to his desk. With a quick gulp, Tyler added, “I didn’t think the library would be so popular. But I can find somewhere else if you want to be alone.”

“Not particularly - do you want me to go?”

“Absolutely not!” Tyler said too quickly. “We can both be quiet, I’m sure.”

“Good,” Ondrej smiled. Tyler smiled back, then turned around to focus on his books again.

After a few more hours, both Tyler’s and Ondrej’s stomachs growled. “Dinner?” Tyler suggested.

“Sure!” They walked downstairs and noticed Nikita in the television room, scowling at papers on the coffee table. “What’s wrong, Nikita?”

“The menu at my favorite pizza place changed!” Nikita explained angrily. “I always order Buffalo wings when the Bolts play the Sabres, but now they don’t have them, so I have to find another place that has them, but these places have ridiculous menus!”

“The Bolts are playing the Sabres?!” Ondrej and Tyler exclaimed in unison.

Nikita chuckled. “Want to help me order and then we can all watch together?”

“Sure.” Tyler sat down to get a better look at the menus. “I think… this one is the best price.”

“Then let’s order!” Ondrej took out his phone and started dialing.

As things turned out, all three of them were Bolts fans, which meant all three of them were quite happy with that evening’s results. As Tyler followed Ondrej back to their room afterwards, he couldn’t help thinking that his roommate was just about perfect.

* * *

A few weeks into the semester, Nikita convinced Tyler to look at the International House’s budget to see if there was enough money to repeat Pancake Night, an event from the previous semester in which the house residents made pancake-like dishes from their home or study abroad countries. With permission from Steven, who had been unable to find a proper treasurer for the board, Tyler obliged. He determined that there was enough to do the event again, albeit at a smaller scale than before.

When Tyler presented his findings to Steven, Nikita, and the other board members, the reaction was relief. “Last semester, Bettman gave us money to advertise the event more, which we didn’t want to do, but Professor Cooper said we had to promote the International House so people would know to apply for next year, so we went along with it,” explained Victor, one of the house’s vice-presidents. “Unfortunately, Bettman took over the event and it got out of hand.”

“He made us spend the entire event standing next to presentation boards talking about our countries,” added Ryan, the other vice-president. “Since everyone in the house is an international student, a past study abroad student, or a future study abroad student, nobody in the house got to eat the pancakes during the event. And, as you might have guessed, there were no leftovers for us to eat afterwards.” Given how much Ryan loved talking about his study abroad year in Denmark, the fact that he was frowning at the memory told Tyler that this experience had been quite unpleasant.

“Well, someone in the house will get to eat this time,” Tyler said. “I’m not smart enough to be any of those, so if worse comes to worst, I can sample all of the pancakes.”

The board members shared a few glances. “Tyler, has anyone in the house made you feel uncomfortable?” Steven asked.

“No!” Tyler insisted. “I mean, sometimes people don’t translate everything they say, but it seems like that’s not just in front me. I was just making a joke about the worst-case scenario before introducing another idea: What if you made it an in-house event? No advertising, no guests, just pancakes?”

“I like it!” Nikita declared. The other board members nodded in agreement.

“Then we’ll get planning,” Steven decided. “Thanks, Tyler.”

* * *

Unfortunately, nobody on the board realized until it was too late that the credit card used to make house purchases had moved from Professor Cooper’s control to Bettman’s. This meant that Bettman did, in fact, find out about the event and attempt to make it a big event again. The house spent a week collectively panicking before Steven called a meeting and explained that he’d spoken with Professor Cooper: “He agrees with us that the way things played out last time wasn’t good, so he’s convinced Bettman not to advertise.”

“But it’s Bettman, which means there’s bad news,” Victor noted. “What is it?”

“It’s going to be a sit-down dinner including a select group of professors,” Steven said. “Bettman is arranging tables based on home or study abroad countries. He’s sending out invites via email so you can enter your relevant places. That’s separate from the Google form I’m going to email everyone once we’re done here, which has to do with your recipes - not just the ingredients we need to buy, but also cooking times so we can coordinate who gets the kitchen when.”

Sure enough, mere minutes after returning to their room, both Tyler and Ondrej received an email from Steven with a link to a Google form. “I’ll have to coordinate with Jan,” Ondrej noted. “Will you have someone to make your pancakes with?”

“I… wasn’t planning on making pancakes,” Tyler said. “They have pancakes in the caf often enough. Mine would just be a somewhat fluffier version, maybe with real maple syrup out of respect for the Canadians, but everyone else has other recipes to do, so… yeah, no.”

“You could ask Ryan or Kevin to help you instead of making Danish pancakes!” Ondrej insisted. “And I’m sure Yanni or Alex would be happy to get real whatever-you-said syrup.”

“Maple,” Tyler said, not really believing that Ryan or Kevin would give up the chance to relive their study abroad year in Denmark, given their general reluctance to shut up about it.

“Maple,” Ondrej repeated before pouting. “Please? For me?”

Tyler sighed. “Fine. I’ve made them on my own in the past, so I can make them on my own again. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all the ingredients I need in the kitchen. And there’s real maple syrup in the grocery store, so I’ll just buy it myself.” He filled out the form quickly, not bothering to put down any ingredients, then checked his inbox. “Did you get anything from Bettman yet?”

“No, but apparently he doesn’t like to do group emails, so it’ll be quite some time before he gets to us, I think.”

* * *

As the days passed and no email from Bettman arrived, not even in the spam folder, Tyler grew nervous. He’d never actually interacted with Bettman, but he knew he didn’t want to email him directly to ask about the invitation. And while everyone spoke very highly of Professor Cooper, this didn’t seem to relate to him, so Tyler didn’t think it made sense to approach him, especially for the first time. Plus, everyone in the house was busy getting ready for the event while struggling through a busy part of the semester - Tyler didn’t want to be a bother, especially since Steven was also looking for a job post-graduation.

And so, whenever Nikita or Ondrej asked him a question about the event, Tyler gave a non-committal answer and turned it into a question for them. Sure, this resulted in a few concerned glances, but nobody ever directly asked Tyler if he’d received an invitation, so he never had to admit that he’d never actually received one.

When the big day arrived, Tyler did his best to stay normal, which meant going to his room to do homework and study after class. He could hear a fair amount of banging and off-key singing in the kitchen, but fortunately it wasn’t a distraction.

“Tyler?”

He turned around to face Ondrej, who looked very worried. “What’s wrong, man?”

“I want you to answer that. Why aren’t you downstairs?”

Tyler furrowed his brow. “Why would I be downstairs?”

“Because it’s time for Pancake Night!”

Tyler checked his phone. Sure enough, about two hours had passed since he’d started studying. But that didn’t really matter because… “I’m not invited.”

“What do you mean? It’s for the international house, which is where you live.”

“No, it’s at the international house, but -” Tyler gulped, hating how upset he sounded. “I kept checking my spam, my deleted email, every folder I have… but I never got the email from Bettman. Everyone else in this house is either an international student, a former study abroad student, or a future study abroad student. I’m not. So I can’t go to Pancake Night.”

“Oh, Tyler…” Ondrej leaned down slightly and gave him a hug. “I’ll stay here with you, then.”

“No, Ondrej,” Tyler forced himself to say. “Please go. Everyone’s worked so hard, yourself included. You deserve it”

Ondrej stepped back. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Tyler managed to hold back his tears until Ondrej closed the door behind him. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there sobbing, but at some point he heard shouting from the kitchen below. He took a deep breath to calm down and listen better - and flinched when the shouting got even louder. With a nervous feeling in his gut, he left his room and headed downstairs.

“Tyler!” Nikita grabbed him by the shoulders and led him to the television room, where most of the other residents were gathered. “We’re staying out of the kitchen for now.”

“Okay…” Tyler took a moment to look around the room, which had been redecorated for the event. “It looks nice.”

“Thanks! The food will be even better, assuming we actually decide to eat!”

Before Tyler could even attempt to ask Nikita what on earth that meant, Bettman stormed out of the kitchen. “You ungrateful troublemakers! I’ll revoke sponsorship of this house!”

“Professor Cooper is the sponsor, not you. All you are is the humanities dean - and a big bully.” Steven, who had followed Bettman out of the kitchen, pointed to the door. “Get out before I call Public Safety on you for disturbing my residents.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Steve.” Bettman gulped as Steven took out his phone, a very scary glare on his face. “Fine!” He stormed out of the house.

Steven sighed, then walked to the doorway of the television room. “Hey, Tyler. Come with me to the kitchen and I’ll explain everything.”

“Okay.” Tyler followed Steven to the kitchen, where Ondrej was leaning over the counter, breathing heavily as if trying to calm down. “Ondrej, what happened?”

“None of us realized you hadn’t been invited to Pancake Night,” Steven said. “When we started setting up tonight, we didn’t have a guest list, just how many at each table. After a few people started cooking, we found a bottle of real maple syrup that none of us knew about, Canadians included. Ondrej thought it might have to do with your pancakes, but then we realized you’d never signed up to make American pancakes. I looked at the Google form settings, and apparently it didn’t process your signup because you left the ingredients question blank - that’s my fault, I should have made the instructions clearer.”

“Jan and I were first, so I never read the rest of the list to see if you were on it,” Ondrej admitted softly.

Steven resumed: “As a Canadian, I got worried about real maple syrup going unused, so I asked Professor Cooper to email me the list of professors coming. He did so right away, and we figured out that the seating arrangements were one short. Nikita pointed out that you kept avoiding the topic, so we wondered if you had other plans, which prompted Ondrej to go looking for you. Then he came back and explained what happened. Bettman got here around that time, so Ondrej asked if we could squeeze you in. Bettman said no and called you a few mean names for even being in the house, so Nikita threatened not to eat dinner unless you were allowed to participate. We all liked the idea enough to stand with him. Bettman got louder, so did Ondrej… and you saw the rest.”

Tyler blinked in shock. “You did all that for me?”

“Of course. You’re a part of this house, even if it was just a quirk of housing that put you here. I should probably say that we want you to become a future study abroad student, but you don’t need to be - you’re our friend and we like you just the way you are.” Steven paused. “Well…” He tilted his head toward Ondrej. “The one thing we’d change about you two is putting an end to the pining. Talk, please.” He walked out of the kitchen.

Tyler tentatively rested his hand on Ondrej’s back. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Ondrej said, his breathing back to normal. “The word that Steven just used… ‘pining’? That has to do with liking someone more than a friend, right?”

“Right,” Tyler nodded. “It means you’re longing to be with someone romantically.”

“Okay,” Ondrej nodded. “Well… I like you a lot. I think I might love you.”

Tyler’s jaw dropped. When Ondrej began to frown, he quickly explained, “I like you a lot and I think I might love you, too.” He leaned towards Ondrej’s face, waited for a smile, then softly kissed him.

“Good work, Stamkos!” Nikita’s voice boomed. “Finish the food, lovebirds! We’re hungry!”

“Fine!” Ondrej groaned. “Nikita really wants fluffy American pancakes, and the Canadians really want their real maple syrup. So do your thing, and we can talk more later tonight.”

“Deal,” Tyler smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is love!
> 
> Speaking of love, that part of this fic wasn't part of my college experiences. In fact, Pancake Night itself wasn't part of my college experience; while I did spend three semesters in the International House, the closest thing to Pancake Night was a joke that we sounded like "IHOP" when we called ourselves the "I-House."


End file.
